Re: Bug#687001: ITP: optional-dev -- fake (empty) dev package
On Sat, 8 Sep 2012 19:37:33 Holger Levsen wrote:
> "optional depends" - what?? Thats self contradictory. If a depends it's
> really optional, it's not a depends, thus that package is buggy and should
> not be fixed by introducing a nonsense package, but by removing this
> depends.
Not at all, it may appears "self contradictory" only because debian/control
"language" doesn't have a right term for it. Or perhaps my wording is not
perfect. If you got the idea, can you suggest a better word?
Imagine a software that builds without a certain -dev package. When present
this package may be used to activate an additional (optional) feature.
When building for as many architectures as we have, situation when some
dependencies are missing (or can't exist) on some architectures is not rare.
However we still want to build our packages with all features possible.
So here are two ideas -- one is to clearly see which build-dependencies are
optional i.e. which packages are not critical for successful build;
and another is to nicely and easily handle unsatisfiable non-critical
"dependencies".
The latter will make maintenance easier and may also be helpful for
backporting or even for distributions who borrow our packages but may not have
all their build-dependencies.
Regards,
Dmitry.
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